I'm Not Me Anymore
by Wooga
Summary: As more and more of Kumi Kawamura's humanity slips away in her fusion with her 'Borg', she begins to question what humanity even means. COMPLETE
1. Afterschool Activities

I'm Not Me Anymore

An Alien Nine Fan fiction by Wooga

Original story of Alien Nine and Alien Nine: Emulators by Hitoshi Tomizawa. The author of this story does not own Alien Nine and makes no commercial profit from this story. Please ask the author (Wooga) before redistributing this story. One more thing- leave me a comment if you liked my story! This is the first chapter of three, not a one-shot.

Yuri was terrified as always, screaming and slipping forward on dirty, scratched rollerblades, wearing her Alien Party uniform, clutching a lacrosse net in one hand. One of her pigtails had come undone, and her shirt had been torn. A strange (they all were,) bug-eyed alien, was barreling after her, amazingly agile on three haphazardly placed legs. The creature growled from an unseen mouth. It bristled its sawdust fur, and the pinkish antennae under its eyes bushed outwards. The strange things rippled like a squirrel's tail until they brushed both sides of the narrow hallway. Yuri made the terrible mistake of looking over her shoulder. The amber, squareish pupils of the animal locked onto hers hypnotically, and she stopped with a whimper, her ankles wobbling in the hard plastic skates. Her Borg spread its wings defensively, drills whirring. The eye whiskers swayed, keeping a silent rhythm. They floated and spread like moth wings, and when they stroked the wall, a pink-grey powder stained the plaster. The air was thick with something Yuri couldn't see. She smelled something like pears. Pears that began to drift lazily over Yuri's head. Over and over, the antennae rocked back and forth, painting a graceful and full figure eight, again and again and...

Sand. Yuri was at the seaside. The ocean had spread blankets of grey fog all around her, fog that spread like a ghost ocean around her. Her fingers were numb, and she heard a high-pitched whistling. It sounded like people, far away, screaming on a roller coaster ride. She was all alone.

Now she was in a car. The gold-brown car with the mustard-yellow seats. She liked that car, but her father sold it a long time ago. Sold it for the money and got something cheaper. Her mother was in the front seat. She looked back at Yuri, and gave her a kind smile. They were driving into the amusement park, through a giant gate painted red, with pictures of happy animal mascots dancing around the sides.

Now, they were in line for the roller coaster. Her mother held her by the wrist. She was struggling against the grip. They stood at the front of the line, and it was a matter of seconds before it was time to ride. She tried with all her strength to pull out of her mother's grip. No, she thought. No. The cart was almost here. There was a faint rumbling, and the cart slid in on the rusty tracks. Sixteen square red seats, empty, with grey cushions. She put her right hand over her mother's restraining fingers, pulling from the muscles in her back, using as much weight as she could, clawing at her mother's fingers. Her mother smiled, her hand was like granite. When she opened her eyes, they were grey, like marbles set into her face, her short-cropped hair black as ink. She forcibly pushed her daughter into the seat, and reached for the restraint bar. The large metal object clicked softly into its licks. 'No, no, mom, please...!' she tried to say, but she was paralyzed. Her voice was stuck. The car was empty but for her. She looked back at her mom despairingly, who waved at her. The rest of the people in line were black smoke. The park was gone, and they were floating in blank space. Yuri yelped as the cart jerked forward, clanking fitfully up the track.

The higher it got, the slower it crept. Yuri was breathing heavily, her hands clenching the steel bars. They seemed solid, but the more she gripped them, the more thousands and thousands of miles away they felt. She closed her eyes tight, but opened them, as she realized falling in darkness would be even more terrifying. She opened them slowly, only to see five hundred feet below her.

The car barreled faster and faster down the slope. All she could do was scream. There was a strange creaking noise, and the cart wobbled back and forth. Yuri realized that one of the wheels had snapped, the front one. Her screaming grew, until it became the only noise in the world. Then she realized that her mouth wasn't even open. The noise split the air, and right when the cart began to flip forward, her eyes snapped open.

She was back in the hallway, the alien writhing angrily on the ground, its antennae tightly bunched together, as if it was attempting to block out the sound. She stepped back slowly, paused, and took another step. Her eyes were locked with the creature's. She saw a small, open mouth below the creatures eyes, filled with teeth like sewing needles. It must have two mouths, one for talking, and one for eating, and it had almost had a chance to use the eating mouth on Yuri. The sharp screaming sound was coming from behind her. The three-legged monster slowly reached one arm up to its nose. It was like a caricature of a man stroking his mustache, contemplating. Then he ripped the antennae out, blue blood flowing outward. It hobbled up onto one leg. It looked awkward like that, slumped diagonally, its rear in the air, its compound eyes searching Yuri's face. The high-pitched squeal increased in intensity, piercing Yuri's ears. Soon it became so high in pitch that she couldn't hear it, only feel it in weak vibrations in her jawbone. Blood the color of the sky drizzled down the creature's face.

The tripod let out a grunt of determination and ripped out its other antennae. It must be deaf now, Yuri thought, as its convulsing immediately stopped. 'Oh, shit!' someone cried out behind her. She didn't have to turn around to recognize Kasumi's voice. The monster straightened itself, and then ran for Yuri, its blood streaming down its barrel chest. Kasumi grabbed Yuri's arm, her blonde hair still spiraled into bizarre pigtails on the side of her head, although she had stopped broadcasting their high-frequency screeching. Yuri hit the ground at a bad angle in her rollerblades, and tripped both herself and Kasumi. Her one weapon now useless, pinned to the ground, Kasumi could only sit there. Yuri's Borg sneered, showing the alien a mouthful of something like baleen plates. It spread its white, angelic wings defensively, distracting the alien from the two vulnerable girls. The Borg's drills spiraled out of every thick feather, shining under the fluorescent lights of the hallway like steel.

The monster stiffened. Yuri eyed it cautiously, her mouth hanging open a little. The burg stared at it, blinking his frog-like eyes. Then, a waterfall poured down the sides of the monster, cascading like streams of watercolor paint over the contours of its chest muscles, dancing down its forelegs, streaming into each finger of its clawed hand. Drops began to form on the stiffened, shocked fingers, and one by one, began to drip on the floor, tapping out a rhythm that became faster and faster until it was staccato.

The monster slumped. Behind its dead form there stood Kumi, her eyes staring into nothingness, her sandy brown hair closely cropped and perfectly straight. Her mouth was a thin, bloodless line set into her face. Four drills snaked out from the alien, and lazily, like snakes, recoiled back into Kasumi's hand, the flesh of which was ripped and sagged, like a popped balloon. 


	2. Integration

(Chapter 2)

Isn't it true what they say- that it always goes haywire before the final act?  
That's an Earth expression, isn't it?  
Isn't hay the word for dead grass? And then she laughed at herself. I don't think anyone gets it.  
Not even an earthling.

Sometimes I think I'm talking to herself. I might as well be. I'm entirely fused, but my Borg isn't even visible from the surface. It has settled under my skin, replacing most of my muscle and bone with hard, tapering coils. But an even more important factor of the drill clan, the one that had made it the one most favored by the testers on Earth, was a process known as 'chemical memory'. The brains of the borg were strands of protein and other minerals that created a pattern another part of the brain could read. This meant that the memories of the Borg- and its connected host- lived on, even after death. This along with a cell- replicating chemical called Cell Gel,meant that a human could live forever. As long as the memory fibers ramained intact, and one cell of their body remained, they could be recreated over and over. Maybe they wouldn't be the same person exactly, but it was as close as humanity could come to true immortality.

But the weapons were nice, too. All the symbiotes that other aliens had transported to earth had wonderful defenses. The angelic, winglike projections of the Borg were actually more similar to legs, or maybe the fins of a devil ray. Somehow, they became incredible weapons, filled with sharp, flexible drills- perhaps the result of some inconceivably desperate evolutionary arms race, millions of years ago, millions of miles away, on some now-unheard of planet.

And the Borgs asked so little in return, at least until fusion ocurred. They got most of their nutrients from the sun, and the gases in the air, collected by tiny receptor cells in their 'wings'. But they also collected nutrients from their host, sweat for the most part, with maybe a few nail parings, stray strands of hair, waste matter, blood if it's shed accidentally.

But like I said, fusion. It starts with one tiny drill, boring into your spine and connecting with the spinal cord. It doesn't hurt, of course...the Borg waits until you are in deep sleep, and secretes a kind of anaesthesia from its mouth first...but it doesnt matter. You're never the same again. You have to share your body with another mind, another memory bank, until slowly - it's so subtle!- you sort of blend into one mind, and some of your memories kind of fade. You don't notice it until it's too late.

I don't want Yuri to know what it's like. The human part of me wants to protect her. (I can still differentiate between human and borg, but a voice deep inside me warns me it won't last.) Part of me has memories I can't understand.

It's funny because they aren't the memories of my Borg. They're the chemical memories of my old Borg before it died, transfered into this Borg. No..that's still not right. These memories...they begin with darkness, nothingness. Then... pushing feebly against thick wet walls, with new wings cracking the walls apart, I gasp and cough from the wet, thick goo sticking to my body. Light shines from between the vanes of enomous leaves in a lush, dark forest. I crawl out of the crunched eggshells, a weak and helpless baby Borg. I clumsily walk over the dead leaves of the nest.(the human part of me is reminded of that forest of spaceships.) I try to fuse with everything I see: a rock, a tree stump, a round fruit similar to Earth's coconut. I come upon a fat, slow herbivore. It doesn't even seem to notice me when I attach myself to his head (Nothing happens when I do. Borgs can only fuse with intelligent life- something that knows how to care for a borg in return.) I remember alien hands picking me up, transporting me to a ship, bringing me to earth. No, these weren't my borg's memories-they're genetic. They could have been ten ,a hundred, even thousands of generations ago! But it's still as vivid as if it had happened yesterday, thanks to the borg's memory- as intact as a song saved on a computer. And now these strands of memory weave with my own. A frog and a human dance, hands holding coiled drills, and together they create of sort of balance, sometimes frightening, sometimes sad. Yes, even sometimes there can be happiness.

Four drills in each arm, five reach to each leg, and three act as support pillars for my trunk (as my skeleton is gone- destroyed and never regenerated) makes twenty-two in all. I'm what they like to call a heavy user. I've fused too much, let the Borg take too much of my human body until I no longer have human functionality. I can never have children- and I suppose I shouldn't, since I was too weak to hold on to myself. Natural Selection. 


	3. Cancer

Glad. I was glad to be back here- in Kasumi's apartment. Glad to warm myself with the steaming hot chocolate I held in my left, undamaged hand. Finally left the hospital, finally left the confines of its cool conformity,its dull steel doors and clinical devices.

It had seemed, as I had stood in cordoned-off room, my hand sinking in the cell-regeneration baths- it had seemed that all the drills in my body had frozen and I was a rigid puppet. My eyes saw and did not see. In a sense they were open, but instinctively glossed over a picture it had seen several dozen times before. And now my arm, sopping and gored from the inside, was transubstaniating. The gel foamed over my wounds, forming new flesh before my eyes.

It should have been mind blowing- miraculous. The first time I had seen it, it had seemed a miracle. I had stood in fearful awe when my fingers had appeared-clean, translucent fingernails and ivory white flesh from the hideous mess they had been. My gut wrenched to remember such pain. Now, it was routine. It was a ten minute chore I went through at least once a week. I had no choice. Whenever an alien decided to infiltrate the school, I had no other way to defend myself than to destroy a part of myself. Now, transubstantiation was homework. It was laundry. A chore. The last of the bubbles frothed off my arm, now clean and neatly pressed. I tried to flex the hand, but it flopped, numb and senseless. The nerves would take a little longer to restructure. I slid the hand into an old oven mitt. Although it was old and coarse, I could barely feel it.

On a whim, she had slipped on her rollerblades and skated home. It was evening now, the school empty. She looked up to the rooftops. A Yellow Knife had sat there before, a ponderous and unbeleivable creature. Now there was just a blaze of orange-red sunlight, glinting gold off the empty windows. School always seemd a bit haunted when it was empty. Kumi sucked in the crisp autumn wind, whcich blew harshly through her sandy hair. She watched her long shadow trail before her. Maybe she had become a shadow as well.

Now she was home, and warm. And glad. Kumi looked at Yuri, who was busy staring despondantly at the flowered table cloth, one that Kasumi had probably hand picked. Kumi was reminded how this place wasn't really Kasumi's apartment, it was her parent's summer timeshare. During the other three seasons, Kasumi was free to use it as she pleased. Like Kasumi, the place was bright, clean, and a little frilly. Yuri slumped in her seat, her eyes blank. Kasumi grinned, dropping a handful of marshmallows into Yuri's hot chocolate. Kasumi beamed at her when Yuri returned her glance. Yuri gave her a cautious smile back.

A few hours later, Kumi was at the sink, scrubbing some dirty dishes. She heard a creaking behind her. She turned to see Kasumi open the fridge, grabbing two jugs of milk.

Kumi knew that Kasumi used the milk to drown out the drills that were trying to infect her, clinging to her hair like mites. Something about them choking on the overabundace of fats and proteins.

Kasumi moved one jug to her other hand, leaning down to grab two more jugs. Kumi propped the door open for her. Kasumi turned to give her another smile. Kumi frowned, aware that the blithe grin was an empty expression. Those kids at school thought she was so charming, but they were were just looking at a facade. Kasumi was little more than a shell for the yellow knife to reside in now, her motives completely alien- in both senses of the word.

Without saying anything, Kumi grabbed two more jugs of milk and followed Kasumi to her room. "I'll see the last of those drills tonight", Kasumi said, grinning, but her voice was cold. The hallway was dark, fed by a tiny bit of light escaping from under one door. They crept past it, into the room Kasumi has chosen for herself. The only illumination was a faraway streetlight, feeding a feeble orange tinge to everything. It added an ominous glow to an empty glass box that was propped in the very center of the room. As Kasumi clumsily balanced one jug on her hip, she pulled the other to her teeth to peel off the safety strip.

"Why are you doing this?" Kumi asked her as Kasumi began pouring the milk hurriedly into the tank. It only filled it about two inches. "It's those darn drills. Pesky parasites," she said, slipping the cap off the other jug. "They aren't the parasites,"Kumi said evenly, "You are." Kasumi chuckled.

"You're cancer," Kumi said, no hint of emotion in her voice. "You think so, nya?" Kasumi replied. "Hand me that jug," she said, gesturing with one hand whil pouring with the other. Kumi handed it to her, saying "Yes, you are. You look human, you act human, but you're just one step short. After all, a yellow knife can only emulate the real thing to a certain extent. It can't make souls, Kasumi." "And yet you call me by that human name," Kasumi grinned. For a moment, her pupils divided into that of the Yellowknife's, gleaming with malice. More than that,it shone with a brutal indifference for all humankind. As Kasumi turned for the door. Kumi shouted, "I know cancer." , her voice wavering more than she would have liked. "It killed my father. It's a cell just a little short of being the real thing, just a little off. And it just keeps dividing and dividing because it's too dumb to stop. And nothing else can stop it until it's killed the very organism it's a part of."

Kasumi turned away from her, a smug grin on her face. "One day you will understand," she said, "I'm sorry for you, Kasumi. The way you are now, you could never see it." and she walked off. Kumi balled her hand into a fist, and the rough cotten of the oven mitt scratched it. She peeled the mitt off, her hand healed as if nothing had ever happened. "So impotent," she whispered.


	4. Ninth Alien

After shutting the door, she walked cautiously up to the other bedroom down the hall. There was a muffled sound coming from inside. Gently, she pushed it a little so she could see inside. It was Yuri. She was lying on the floor, leaning against the side of bed. She slumped as if her body was just dead weight. She was sniffling like she had just cried for hours. Her Borg sat on the bed, indifferently licking the tears from Yuri's face. The Borg glanced at Kumi and then continued licking.

Kumi had seen her like this a hundred times. By now Kumi knew to always carry tissues in her pocket. Kumi grimaced as she took a few more cautious steps into the room. She was pathetic, but she would never say that to Yuri. In fact, she couldn't even blame her. She was the only real human left in this house. Kumi was more liked the winged creature on the bed, they were both filled with the same stuff.

"Get up." Yuri froze. She turned and blushed. "K-Kumi?" She self consciously wiped her face ans sat up. "Did you want something?" She said, so ashamed she couldn't even hold her head up. "It's okay," said Kumi, bending down and handing her a tissue. Yuri gave her a small smile, but Kumi''s eyes were blank, her mouth inexpressive. "Yuri, I have a question for you." "Yeah? She said. "About the math homework?" she asked innocently. "What? After all of this you still care about of school?" Kumi asked full of awed curiosity. Yuri looked confused. "Yeah, what's wrong with that? The exams are coming up soon, you know!" Kumi turned to look at the borg, which had retracted its tongue and was now resting on the bed. She was silent for a long time.

"Kumi?" Yuri's voice was small, but it rang in Kumi's ear. She could hear the concern and caution in it. Finally Yuri turned to her. "You're thinking too small." Yuri narrowed her eyes in vexation. She waited for Kumi to speak again. "You've been there, Yuri! You've been to the forest of spaceships! You know what this is! It's not some game!" Kumi shouted, waving one of her arms as if displaying the scope of the problem. Yuri was silent. "Why do you think these aliens keep coming to the school? Why do they keep targeting these little schoolgirls instead of going to straight to the capital?" Yuri stood up. "I don't know. They just do. So we have to stop them. "  
"But don't you get it? The party was formed by a bunch of symbiotes! It's just a plot by them to get more hosts!" Yuri shook her head. "Ms. Hisakawa would never do that!" Kumi sighed "Yuri, I know that this is hard to understand, but", she slipped the mitt off her hand. "But she's just like me." Yuri stared at her hand, smooth and perfect skin with long, thin fingers. Although she was expecting it, she still whimpered when the drills twisted and squirmed under the skin, squirming all down her arm like one giant tentacle. Yuri looked away, shaking.

"We're the best alien to fuse with. WE are the ninth alien, Yuri." "That's a lie!" She shook her head. "I was born here! On earth! I'm not an alien. I'm a human." She looked Kumi in the eye. "So are you." The taller girl smiled, and Yuri could see that it was warm, but also tinged with an ineffable sadness. "Yuri. Nobody's an alien on their home planet." But then, the smile faded. "Don't you see, Yuri? We have to go. We have to go together."

"W-w-where? Where do we have to go?" Kumi said, her eyes blank with confusion. Tiny steel spirals twined out of Kumi's fingertips. The skin was bloodless. They spread out of both of Kumi's arms toward Yuri like the wings of a condor.

Kumi could articulate them fluidly, and they silently reached Yuri. She was shaking. "Let's go together, let's take the Borg's ship and go. We'll go to their home planet, get all the answers." She stroked Yuri's hair reassuringly, even though she was standing seven feet away. "Let's get out of here and never have to be alien fighters again." Two drills came to rest on Yuri's shoulder. "I know you're sick of this too, Yuri"  
The little girl began whimpering. She looked up at Kumi, shaking. "What are you talking about?!"  
The drils clapped onto her and yanked hard, pulling her frail body to the floor. Kumi walked towards her, the drills sucking back into her shoulder joint. She seemed unaware that her arms were just bags of skin flopping around her, after spending the entire day just to heal them. Yuri didn't even bother to resist as the drills clasped around her neck, groping around her windpipe. Even choking, the backs of her eyes pricking, she could see that Kumi was afraid too. The drills were squeezing around her neck, enraged that she should even exist. The coils themselves writhed into her neck, abrading it. Suddenly, with a shudder, they pulled her towards Kumi, setting her face less than an inch ways from Kumi's. Kumi leaned forward, their lips touching for an instant, even while her eyes burned with malice. Then, like a hurricane, the drills quicklysubsided with a disturbing gentleness. They softly placed Yuri on the ground, where she gasped and sputtered, but didn't dare to move. When her breathing returned to normal, and then became increasingly deep and strangely calm. She could hear a strange noise, realizing in time (as she readjusted) that it was Kumi sobbing.

"Kumi," Yuri tried to say, but it came out in a haggard whisper. "I'm sorry. There's so much- so much I just don't understand." But Kumi continued to cry, even louder than before. After a few minutes she picked herself up and walked out of the door without saying a word, closing it softly behind her. Yuri picked herself up off the floor and into bed. The borg slipped off the nightstand and stood guard the rest of the night, spreading its wings protectively in front of the doorway.

If only I knew how Yuri could forgive me. Everything's such a mess. I don't even know _why_ I did that. I must have been blindly insane. I don't know why I kissed her. I don't understand anything. I'm afraid. I wish Yuri knew how sorry I was.

I slipped into the third room, completely dark. I slipped into the covers, with no borg to guard me. Before I fell asleep, a thought popped back into my head. I still had tears. I was still a human being.


End file.
